36 Responses

Re the film - I'm too young (b 1970) and yet I immediately knew what Russell was talking about. So I must have been shown it some time in the 70s.

The money shot has been excerpted on TV quite a few times over the years, so maybe it's that.

Something I forgot to say in the blog today is that I found out about the project because I had the idea of trying to stage a screening at a Great Blend. Of course, with the new version, Archives NZ was always going to want to stage its own preview. We might still be able to do something with it.

I imagine a DVD version for widescreen TVs would be possible now.

Re the accents - didn't the NZBC of old put a lot of work into imposing some sort of RP on to all its announcers? And didn't they stop in the 1970's? That's what I recall being told.

Probably. There was a belief that one spoke differently on TV or radio than one did in life. But it tended to happen to anyone who had a camera pointed at them.

From memory, this played when TV started each morning - kind of the opposite of the Goodnight Kiwi. I don't think it was an except from This Is New Zealand, mainly because it looked newer than something filmed in 1970.

But I bet it was directly inspired by This Is New Zealand, and further strengthened this particular aspcet of our national idenity

Top information from Chris Mitson, formerly of TVNZ News and Current Affairs:

There's a Simon Walker interview with Muldoon you've never seen and probably never will.

As a Christmas spoof the TVNZ programme "Dateline Monday" put Walker in the studio to reprise the famous interview and taped Walker in a variety of cringing responses such as "Well said Prime Minister" and "Quite right, prime minister."

However a senior technician from the spineless days of the NZBC saw the mock version being edited and reported it "upstairs". The mock interview was canned on orders from above and the Dateline Monday staff walked off the final programme of the year in protest.

The decision to can the interview allegedly wasn't because it mocked Muldoon. It was feared in those far off days that the general public didn't realise how flawlessly an interview could be edited and therefore might not trust future interviews. Yeah, right. Incidentally, I seem to recall that years later when official documents were released, it turned out Muldoon was correct in his assertions and Simon Walker was wrong.

And, as you've doubtlessly realised by now, Walker's accent was not an affectation. He was a South African-born member of the Oxford University debating team who picked up a job with the brand new TV One while the team was visiting New Zealand.

Genuine New Zealand English was certainly stigmatized, and seldom heard in the media up through the 70s. And yep - there was accent training, at least for the NZBC announcers - aiming toward RP as a model.

But we're over it now, happily - and lots of our media personalities, politicians, etc, have fabulous NZ accents.

It's 1970. I'm 8. Standing with my parents in a really long queue outside the New Zealand pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka.

Inside there are three screens. Amazing. And that music. And all these images. And all these Japanese people and these three Kiwis from Hastings watching our country - on three screens at once! It was, I recall, very cool.

Then, I think, I had Pepsi for the first time. When you're 8 weird things like that stick in the memory.

"It's our New Zeeeeeland. We're so proud to be here. We bring the best - the very best to yooooou!"

I can't remember all of the lyrics to the rest of the song, but it had bits like "from this lovely land of ours" and "from mountains high, to lakes so deep and blue" (No mention of urban areas - interesting). I tried looking for it in YouTube a few months ago, but with no luck.

From memory, this played when TV started each morning - kind of the opposite of the Goodnight Kiwi. I don't think it was an except from This Is New Zealand, mainly because it looked newer than something filmed in 1970.

That was the opening theme for TV1 c. 1985. Scanimation was still the in-thing back then, just before the emergence of CGI.

Genuine New Zealand English was certainly stigmatized, and seldom heard in the media up through the 70s. And yep - there was accent training, at least for the NZBC announcers - aiming toward RP as a model.But we're over it now, happily - and lots of our media personalities, politicians, etc, have fabulous NZ accents.